Tag: Trauma Wise

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It Feels Bleak

kimberleen

It feels bleak this Thursday morning. South Africa is on stage six loadshedding which essentially means that there is no power for six hours a day or something like that. A state of disaster was declared a new Minister of Electricity was appointed and guess what South African’s just roll on. They barely look up from their coffee as the country slides into a little more chaos. Maybe it’s the flock response, maybe it’s amazing reslience training or maybe it’s just extaordinary to watch people operate with such grace under fire. In South Africa the hustle is real. There is no state hand out and very little support. It’s ride or die. You got to figure it out quik or you are quit. Lots of people get broken in the process. South Africa’s relentless very real existence down here in the Cape of Good Hope. The place that is heralded as the place of good governance, if of course totally systemically racist. You only have to look at thr local Khoi San land disputes to know that and block on afforable housing in Seapoint.

Why am I writing about this today? I suppose the answer is why not? As well as I’ve been thinking about marketing a lot. What’s my story, who am I what I am trying to tell people through my narrative. What is the narrative? A marketer that I was considering collaborating with asked me what do you want to offer through social media? My answer was simple. I want to offer people a process. What does that mean? I want people to be able to witness a human process. Which is my process. That it is not easy to be alive in the world even if you do claim to be a quantum manifestation rainbow practitioner.

One of my Trauma Doula’s in preparation posed a question the other day as to why some wellness practioners only want to focus on the good stuff. You know the acturian crystal light vision and things like that. It’s what some people might term as toxic positivity and spiritual bypasssing; of course the people immersed in those practices could never think that. The belief that underpins that is that talking about trauma attracts trauma. Of course if you know that your thoughts create things then it’s totally understandable why you might think that. However, I simple don’t think or believe that. More than this I think it this kind of thinking probably highlights the challenges of duality and polarity. Because trauma isn’t necessarily a bad things and the judgement of it as such highlights how misunderstood trauma really is. As a trauma geek that makes me sad, especially when we look at thngs like post-traumatic growth and as “What happened to you?” talk about post-traumatic wisdom. People who have trauma have super power.

As many of you will know trauma is physiological and it’s strange misinformed and misguided approach to both gaslight, victim blame and shame those that quite simply don’t have the ability to snap out of trauma. This behaviour in other equates to ablism. I doubt many of us would go around saying these kinds of things to someone with a broken leg for example and advocate that people with broken legs that pay attention to their broken legs attract more broken legs or even broken legged people. These attitudes a fly in face of what toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing believe that we do have the ability to create our own reality. We can choose what we manifest regardless of what our current circumstances are.

It’s also important to note that because trauma is physiological it requires such things as human care to heal effectively. So when faced with the physiological repsonses to trauma; I would say for those experiencing trauma the most important thing would be to identify people who have the knowledge and capabilites to effectively care for trauma. Given that you cannot heal from trauma alone this means having to find a safe friends group or therapeutic support system to help you through the process. I hope this helps.

If you enjoyed reading this article I would be delighted if you can buy me a ko-fi here.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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Getting Back on the Band Wagon

kimberleen

What exactly does band wagon mean anyway? I like to think that it’s representative of some travelling Troubadours having and extistential crisis about there musical service to the Queen and literally having to leave the band wagon.

Anyways as some of you will have noticed and been aware that I have been what you might call away. However the truth is, is that I have been at capacity. Working with trauma is not easy. Working with ecojustice, women, indigenous rights, anti racism, decolonisation, a wellbeing economy and trauma work is tough. It takes a lot of emotional capacity to be involved in such things and sometimes I just don’t have it. Worse than that I consider blogging and writing to be a wellness practice. So you can only imagine where I have been and that feels sad for me. Of course nobody wants to hear about a trauma workers dwindiling capacity or about what now seems to be the cyclical nature of my compassion fatigue. That compassion fatigue is real or that priortising wellness in all area of your life can be challenging especialli while caring for others. I have at least stop saying that my life is busy and instead saying my life is full and my life is rich, meaningful and full.

To much social media and in fact media in general advocates for strong boundaries. However where does that leave you when you are dealing with infant children, disabled adults and the elderly. Although I don’t class myself as a carer, so many of us are doing this kind of work. Where we just have to accept that we might need to catch up with our needs late. However we sit in the paradox that if I am well then everybody is better. It’s not always that easy though and people in caring roles are all to aware of this. Dwelling on this thought takes me to the role of land guradians and their now deadly role as land defenders. I have two of these types in my immediate circles the death threats are real, the chronis stress is exhausting and the gas guzzling corprorations that are doign thes things just keep on going. You might want to talk about the extortionate wealth of the oil and gas companies in relations to your own fuel bill. I look at it as extortionate wealth that actively, consciously and legitimately destroys live and lifes on this planet. Hike’s in fuel prices for many of you are inconveint for some, deadly for many.

Then we have to take into account that we live in toxic is a toxic world, compiled of multilayerd toxic systems that impact on nearly every aspect of our live absolutely no one is untouched by this. I’ll say it before and I’ll say it again I beleive that we life and anti-human system and following on from a visit to the COP15 the UN convention on biological diversity I could also say that we now live in an anti-life system. It’s not just about us humans it’s about all the other earthlings too.

I’d like to say that my trip to the the COP15 was inspirational, uplifting, motivational. If you were expecting that I am sorry. All my worst imaginings were confirmed and worsened. I feel like I am now watching “The Don’t Look Up” movement in real life. Let’s be fair though I have always felt that way. Which might have more to do with my compassion fatigue than anything else this February. What happens when you find out that you are right? You see all my life I’ve looked out at the world and it’s madness and wondered it must be me. Why can’t everybody else see this? Why if I point it out does nobody care? Why if I talk about do very few people listen. The truth is I often still feel like that. However this year I feel like I have turned a corner. I don’t need to learn more, or be more, read more books figure more shit out or understand another person’s perspective. I am done. I am done being nice to ecocide advocates. I am done being nice to systemically traumatised people particularly men. I’m done being nice to people that won’t acknowledge and center indignous rights and knowledges as part of their process. I’m done trying to explain why your very vanilla word view is harmful. I’m done trying to cram PhD level knowledge about the decolinisation process into a five minute calls for your convenience, that you are not paying me for because somebody brought it up in board meeting and I am done being nice to those with colonlial inherticances that won’t acknowledge it. I’m done having to explain what a wellbing economy actually looks like when you don’t ascribe to capitalims as the solution. And finally I am done having to explain to people that don’t want to listen that trauma work and the acknowldgement of systemis trauma sit at the center of all that. I also feel like I have said all this before and have failed to stick to my boundaries. I need to be referring people to more books or these blog posts.

I realise now that not writing these blogs is at the source of what is holding me back. The answer always comes through writing, that is what I always find.

If you enjoyed reading this article I would be delighted if you can buy me a ko-fi here.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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The Human Life

kimberleen

I wrote out notes for this talk well over three years ago and hadn’t put together that I should make a blog post out of these things. To be honest I can’t really remember what I was talking about. I suspect that it was something to do witht the human life span or even human life cycles hah I wonder if I still have the write up to do the facebook events…

I do and they’ve helped immensely. When I first was working on the marketing for The Life Doula I had the tagline ’embrace the seasons of life’. As someone with CPTSD I tell you I am talking about far greater life cycles than those of the widely accepted things more Dantes Inferno, The Divine Comedy and The Nine Circle of Heaven rather than that of Mother, Maiden and Crone. Life cycles in all their forms and nuances are critical to how we develop as humans. From conception to birth we are now beginning to understand that even the seemingly ‘invisible’ start of a new life can have major repercussions as to how our future will unfold. Given that I spend much of my time discussing childhood trauma we only have to watch your average shit television series to understand how our parental relationship through childhood can fuck you up for life.

It’s only a matter of common sense that you might want to consider what you want to manifest over the course of the rest of your life. No big deal right? Of course all the Life Coaches will tell you to write it down. Get clear on your goals and manifest what you want. That bit’s easy isn’t it? Big house, nice care, freedom to travel. The thing is if you are reading this blog. My blog you didn’t turn up here cause life is going well. Maybe is was a car crash, maybe it was the shit corporate job that you kept you replicating the same shit patterns or oh no…that relationship. You can spend your whole life going round in the same circle. Which is very profoundly different from cycling upwards into new possibilities. Do you know what those possibilities are? So many of us are caught in unsatisfying life cycles because we are limited by our own imaginations or even worse the expectations of other people. Fuck that.

Yes, it’s good to know what you want out of your future. Yes, it’s good that have dreams. What’s really amazing is if that looks totally different to everybody else around you.

I have to be honest here. I came to the game late. I haven’t achieved everything I hoped to. Yet at the same time I have achieved far more than I could have ever imagined. Simoultaniously my biggest challenges was getting onto my own path. What’s really interesting that the chaellges I had getting on to my own path were everything to do with systemic trauma. The coming to terms with systemic trauma has been a huge growth point in my figuring out what I want to bring to the world.

When I started The Life Doula five years ago now I literally didn’t have the language for what I do. Everybody was telling me to niche and I could barely find a way to describe trauma, let alone understand that is what I was dealing with. I was so unsure of myself. How could this be it when everyone else was just ploughing on, on getting people focused on their goals, even though most goals were destroying the planet. Anyways what I was saying back then in a very roundabout way is that your life is important. It has value way beyond that which you might have ascribed to it or even the people around you. Pay attention to it. You’ve got anything up to 125 years to do some really cool stuff. What’s stopping you?

This article was written to accompany the Trauma Wise Circle by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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Miracle Humans

kimberleen

Yes, you are a little bundle of miracle consciousness to love and cherish all for yourself. How nice is that? Are you now filled with warm fuzzy feelings of love and joy? Truly you are miraculous. There is a ridiculous sequence of numbers required to examine exactly how miraculous you are. So much so that it seems a bit tiresome to write them here. It’s a number so big you might barely pronounce it. It wouldn’t occur anywhere else and yet you are here. Here living your best life but only if you choose to. The chances of you being born, alone are one in 400 trillion. This doesn’t include the chances of you actually making it into adulthood. You see you are doing great.

You may not be aware but a number of factors had to come together beautifully in order for you to exist. It’s not just a matter of boy meets girl. It’s a matter of boy meets girl back to the start of human evolution and all the mammalian incarnations before that. Oxygen creation and a life-supporting environment had to happen a very long time before we even get to the pinnacle moment of sperm meets egg not to mention making it out the womb.

Before you even arrived here in this consciousness you had already been on such an epic adventure. From the creation of genes, all the way down to your DNA everything within your body has been passed on through the aeons to create you. Your mother may even been dreaming of your creation and existence from her own childhood. You have been called into this life in so many profoundly intentional ways that I personally and very grateful to have you there.

In recent years I personally have been deligating a lot of wondrous things to the universe. You know like human carrying ethical solar-powered electric drones. As I get onto that wavelength even now I know the perfect human has to be created to fulfil that task. If I trust that the universe is continually working on evolutionary consciousness I have to believe that every single human on this planet holds value. That you are the very latest creation at the cutting edge of evolution, that you are one mightily advance being.

Maybe you don’t believe me. Maybe you caught in a depressive cycle or maybe frozen in anxiety that either one you can’t see out of? Yes, the world is toxic, dangerous, crazy and destructive. However, evolution is pushed for by the slow persistent push of I think I can.

You have three different forms of brain. Imagine that human beings have been through such an extensive process of evolution that we have had to develop three different times of brain. No wonder we get confused sometimes? If you can grow a new brain well it else can you do? Sometimes the subtle achievements are the best. Just think how many humans had to collective change their behaviour to grow new brains?

You see we take it for granted that we exist. It’s a strange perspective really when we look at the world and see what is happening. Even more so we get depressed about the past and anxious about the future. We regret what has happened and what we have inherited. We berate and degrade ourselves in internal backchat. Yet on the most profound level, your existence is a miracle even with 8 billion of us on the planet. We think that we aren’t important or that we have no value. If you look at the long line of events that resulted in your creation, you’ve got to feel very lucky indeed.

Value what you have. It is certainly true of my journey that much of my challenge in life has been appreciating my own value. Sometimes this can be a very hard thing to do. When we don’t feel seen, heard or valued. Of course, there’s a lot more to it than that. Attachment theory…

If you are striking out into a new life, breaking the bondage of intergenerational trauma then it is clear, you got to find a way to build yourself up and create a new way of being. You are a miracle and if you’ve been getting through some tough shit without support that makes you very very special indeed.

This article was written to accompany the Trauma Wise Circle by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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Collective Trauma

kimberleen

Oh wow. When I wrote this as a title I had no idea that I would be writing it straight off the bat after having completed a mini project about land trauma. It’s like I want to write you a list of all the individuated causes of trauma I have come across over the last few weeks and even years, so that you might get a sense of what collective trauma actually means. It’s a long list, some of which I have explored in a number of previous blog posts and I am sure at some point might translate into an E-Book or even a book, book. Some of the primary sources of personal trauma are land, religious, educational, economic, institutional, gender, race, sexuality. Yup it’s a shit show. As you will know if you are reading this as part of Feral The Systemic Healing Circle. I have defined myself as a Systemic Trauma Specialist. What that means is that I look at all the ways in which ‘The System’ creates trauma. How those traumas intersect and become amplified.

Each one of the above material trauma’s might form a more specific psychological manifestation of collective trauma. One facet of religeous trauma might be religious guilt or specifically Christian guilt, as a result of original sin. That as a result of being born of original sin you are inherently sinful (Yup it’s loaded). Even though we ourselves may not speficially experience the guilt of original sin, their are millions of people out their that do. Original sin and it’s emotional psychological implications is an experience known to many as well as being a belief that has been held intergenerationally and thus ancestrally for over a millenaia. When we begin to apprcaite the weight of such a concept and how long it has been held in the human field we begin to approciate the unseen power it might have over the collective field. This is collective trauma. Of course original sin is only one of thousands of internalised belief systems that might inform collective trauma. I wonder how many you can easily indentify within yourself?

Let me break it down for you a little more. You see we all carry trauma, intergenerational and even epigentic (trauma that is carried in our genes). For example many of us experience land trauma. We are dispossessd, do not live in the indigenous lands of our ancestors. We have no connection back to the roots that connect us to any of our ancestral lineages, where not raised speaking the mother tongue of or people of our clan. As a result many of us feel displaced or lost in the world, continually looking for a way back to ourselves. The reason of the disconnection can be multiplus from family fueds to, economic deprivation, famine, war and much much more.

Many of these events that caused the displacement and disconnection become point of cultural trauma for example slavery, the Irish Potaoe Famine, The Holocaust. These are historical events who’s impacts move through time and create historical trauma. As each of these event impact an individual, a family, a community, a national identity they become part of cultural identity, collective consciousness and thus part of our collective trauma. As it is up to each individual, family, community, nation to resolve this trauma, trauma becomes fluid moving through realtionship, generations, spaces waiting to be healed.

Other things too can contribute to collective trauma such as sexism and racism. Collective trauma can be so prevelant yet appear to be invisible. That it is something so obvious that we might not even fully recognise it’s impact like World War Two or in South Africa, Apartheid. Collective trauma can also extend to intersecting structures of ‘The System’ like Colonialism, Religion and Education. When we really take our time to get to know people community and places there are common threads of collective trauma that run through all our lives. This does not mean to to say that Collective Trauma affects all of us the same. Some people have recurring nightmares, others dysfunctional family sytstems, while many of us battle with collective trauma as part of a ‘mental health’ innerscape. Inequality also plays it’s part in sustaining collective trauma. It is not as straight forward as either cultural or strucutural trauma often collective trauma can manifest in the environments that we live in.

So to put it succintly and as far as I am concerned Collective Trauma is how we psychically hold Systemic Trauma. Yes I just said the word psychically.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude to accompany Feral Systemic Healing Circle.

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The Human Connection

kimberleen

‘You are born alone and you die alone’ It’s not true is it? And yet it is banded around as some kind of cure all explannation for the struggles of the human life. No doubt thought up by some highly evolved critic with a high victim consciouness. If only we could take a snap shot of the inside of their brain. If you are alive, someone cared enough to nurture you. Maybe not in the way that you wanted. Maybe not by a person that you would have chosen and yet as an infant they chose to keep you alive. Of course it’s really easy to see that someone may have kept you alive for there own selfish interests. Even if your care was an entirely selfish act you held enough value for that care to be continued. Lets face it children are expensive.

It probably sounds crude and uncaring to explain the human connection in this way. After all most of are searching for a place to call home. A place to fully express ourselves and just be. Yet we carry so much baggage, so much hurt, so much seperation consciousness. It’s hard to connect, especially when we feel abandoned by our closest family members.

If I am brutally honest I think given the world that we live in that knowing that we were cared for should be good enough. Just because you were born into this world it is not a god given right that you should be afforded the opportuntiy to survive into adulthood. It sounds pretty brutal doesn’t it? Given that I am writing this from a rural part of South Africa I can assure you that this is true. To be an adult human is a luxury. I know we should be aiming for higher and yet there it is the brutal reality. Also if you are living in South Africa it’s good to know that the average age of death is forty-nine. Yup so that’s me. I’ve got nive years left to live. Of course white privilge might tell me a different story about that. Yes colour is a factor…

Those of us living at the center of whiteness conveniently don’t have to think about that too much.

In farely recent history humans were breeding other humans like farm animals for means of trade and slavery. What must it feel like to be the product of a forced breeding programme? What must it feel like to be produced rather than created? How does that effect the psyche and epigentics? How all of this impacts systemic trauma levels in the human brain and body. Having been produced for profit how does that change the human story?

Of course in changes everything. It changes how we understand humans and humanity. It changes how we understand ourselves, where we come from and who our ancestors were on both sides of the fence. The enslaved vs the enslavours if you’re all baout claiming your European ancestry you are all about slavery if you are all about African ancestors worship you are all about slavery. The things torterous things that we do to one another, these are the ties that bind. Many of us spend a life time tryin to break family bonds while some of spend a lifetime trying to strengtne them. Often we have to seek connection outside family to move forward with our lives. Sometimes our best connections are those of friendship.

So you see here we are alive. Alive becasue of the pro-creation of other people. Alive because of human nurturance (even if it is just our own) alive because we were able to connect to the ever flowing and infinte abundance of the universe. The true connections that we have to create is the one with ourselves. The true connection is to that of our perfect place in the cosmos and the ability to manifest anything from where we stand. It’s true. You better believe it. You just have to learn to trust it. It is time to connect. It is time to fall so deeply in love with yourself that the universe brings you everything that you desire… its time to connect with the deepest desires of your soul and to know that this is exaclty what you were born to create.

This article was wirtten to accompany the Trauma Wise Circle, by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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How To Be Human?

kimberleen

I first came up with the idea that we have to learn to be human about five years ago. The world wasn’t ready for that idea then and although human consciounsess seems to have moved on a bit (at least going by my insatgram feed) the world is still struggling. It doesn’t take much to apprecaite that humaness is not a given. That as a species we are not automatically kind or even fare. In fact that much of the time the odds are stacked against us by a system that prioritses profits and whiteness. That white people don’t even know what whiteness is. It’s a beautiful combination of systemic trauma and non-white prejudice. You can say it’s clourism or even racism and still it’s so much more than that. Whiteness is the exclusion of anybody that refuses to accept the standardised forms and systems of institutions, organisations, corporations and governments. Yes you can absolutely decolonise something.

I’m not sure exactly how I framed the idea of how to be human a few years ago. There was alot about connection. A lot about the miracle of life and guess what ? Earth the human paradise. It often still disturbs me how detached we are from our true purpose here in our human bodies living an Earthly life. Of course no one persons purpose or calling is the same. We are all entitiled to have and live a many varied life. There is no one size fits all answer to humaness. Would you want there to be. Diversity is everything. Expression is everything. Creation is everything. As I sit here on the very expansive edge of consiousness. You see Abraham Hicks has got a lot to say about the human experience and it would seems so do I. You see I look around and I think human life in very deep ways. I look at the facts and then I look at my feelings and consider what is true for me as I step into my own belief system. It’s clear that we we look at the vastness of space or the habitability of our nearest planets, that Earth is a very special place. That to have entered into consciousness here is an entirely unique and incalculable opportunity. That it would be a shame to waste it. I know that life isn’t easys. I know that truama can make the world a scary hostile place. I know that many of us are not born with access to the resousrces that would have been an innate human right not that long ago. It makes me wonder how did we get here? How did we come to be at this place? I look at the other options like jetting off to Mars for example and I know that is not my journey at least not in this lifetime and then I wonder… this is it I have incarnated here. There is nowhere else that I would love to be and that on Earth no matter how challenging it might be I have to opportunity to have to most amazing life. From where I chose to live from what I chose to do. There are countilless ways that I could be spending my life here on earth and that I do not have to settle for anything less than what I want. That the only person in charge of that is me. That I have to take full resonsibiltiy for myself. That although the environments and the family systems that I was born into can be tough there are ways to expand thoguh that pain into a better life and in fact that is part of the challenge. Part of the human challenge is connecting to ourselves and discovering exactly where we want and need to be.

Of course this article is written from the perspective of privilige. When I think about access to opportunity I know I have and unfair advantage. Even as I wrote this and I wondered about the idea of showing up as a way to break into opportunity I had to consider is that true? Is that possible? The truth is that even showing up can be an extraordinary challenge when we don’t have the resources. How can someone attend varisity when there isn’t the money to do so. How can someone attend classes when they haven’t got moenty to eat. How can the afford to stay in college when there are no jobs to help pay the way. Yes the world is unjust and unfair and although it may be true. I never want to spend any of my time accepting tha truth is acceptable.

This article was written to accompany the Trauma Wise Circle by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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Humans

kimberleen

Now this is a big subject. No two ways about it. Where exactly do I start with this one? Did you know that the oldest know humanoid is on display in Huntarian Museum in Glasgow? That they were named her Lucy after The Beatles son ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’. A lot has happened since the supposed discovery of the ‘missing link’, not least the connection between psychodelic plants and the emergence of human consciouness. Of course that all depends on who’s version of history you believe and if you have watched that banned Ted Talk.

I suppose as a human myself it’s hard for me to write about the subject of humans with any real sense of perspective. All we have to go on is the stories that we are told and that we tell. Which draws me back to a museum installation and exhibiton at Freedom Park in Tswhane. What are our orgin stories? It’s clearly no coincidence that I am wrting this directly after The Emotional Journey where I asked reader to explore their own origin stories. That’s the thing though isn’t it? That we all belong. More importantly than that, that we all belong together. And if you really want to dive in we all belong to one another. That it is the way that we relate that makes us human. That we don’t have a story to tell if it isn’t in relation to another person. That even if it wasn’t another person we are able to transcirbe the experience of human interconnectivty on to other things like the moon, or a teddy bear. It’s pretty obvious, we are here to connect. Yet at this juncture in history it is clear that the connections are broken.

Our broken connections start with the interpersonal and end with planetary destruction. We have lost the profound value of interconnection of everything and between everything and that all things hold equal weight in the sacred cosmology that we live every single day.

This article was inspired by three things the concept of Healing Humans, The Free Buffet and a Trauma Wise Circle. You can click through to find out more indepthly what these three concepts mean to me. However the main thing that I want you to take away from the above ideas is that Healing Humans is at the very center of the survival of our species and with that the only thing that we have full control over is our own healing journey. Something that I like to term as Personal Activism. You can come join some fellow healing humans over at my Healing Humans Facebook Group

This article was written to accompany the Trauma Wise Circle by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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The Emotional Journey

kimberleen

Victimhood exploded into my consciousness today as I wondered what that really meant for so many of us. Victimhood has become a dirty word. So much of what we are told to be outraged about is in fact inconvenient, uncomfortable and honestly best left under the carpet for most people. We just don’t talk about it. About our weaknesses about our fears. Nor do we take the real-time to identify their origins. It’s an ever-ongoing journey the journey back to ourselves. Most of our journeys start with trauma, whether it’s garden variety childhood trauma or something a little more dramatic. Trauma lies at the root of our emotional journey. Of course, not everyone might believe that, for me it’s certainly a larger part of my truth. Once we get to a certain point in our own lives we really have no other option than to take responsibility for our journey. We have to take responsibility for our choices and we have to stand in our own sovereignty when reaping the consequences of those actions. So many of us walk the tightrope of boundaries trying to figure out what is just the right amount of give and take. For me personally, I always lookout for the best in people and now as I get older I have truly given deep thought to what is the most compassionate thing I can do for me. That seeing the best in people and wanting what’s best for them is not necessarily what is best for me. That in a world where you could be anything being kind isn’t always helpful. I’ve been mulling all of this over for months now. All the flawed belief systems that I have been running my life on. Unconditional love, sacrificial love, guilt, kindness, compassion and trust (I was raised a Catholic after all). Of course they are great values to have however what I have learned is that I have to put myself at the center of that circle. Even more recently what I have learned is that in my early twenties I was actually doing a lot better than I thought. More than this, the world is a lot more fucked than I thought and even more interestingly the people that are trying to save ‘the world’ are the most fucked of us all. Like seriously I’ve figured out a lot and although in my fortieth year I think I might have bordered on becoming a bit more conservative I fully appreciate that now more than ever I’m more radical than I ever thought. More than this I am frustrated, bored and quite frankly over it. Over what has been dished out and served up like dog vomit for us all to willfully eat. The terrible thing is that nobody actually knows any better. Like seriously unless you are invested in deep listening. You are not even close to discovering or unleashing the answers to the world’s problems. The world is at a loss.

Wow. It really is emotional. What else did you expect when you were catapulted into a human life that is bookended by birth and death? Yes, the emotional journey is about everything in the middle from dropping your first ice-cream to signing off on your will. It’s intense in here, this human life.

It’s certainly not what we are sold from the family films to the bible or even something a little edgier. It is really clear that most of the narratives are false. Well at least from my perspective? Or are they? You see I’ve been sitting at the centre of the emotional journey for a while now. I’ve been alive for a while now and like most of you I didn’t start out with anybody talking to me about how I feel. How I should feel or indeed if any of my feelings were ok? From joy to dismay most of my feelings by most of the people I have met on this journey through life have been dismissed, overlooked, ridiculed, mocked, weaponised and ignored. As a result, I have suppressed, repressed and ignored my feels and along with it any sense fo self. To be clear I here I am only talking about my feelings here. I amn’t even delving into the more resonable realm of thought. When it comes to human conversation orginal thought can be treacherous if you dare to have and imagination.

You see there’s a lot of talk about the heroes journey about the predictive steps that you might take to self-redemption. The real kicker is that you have to lose everything to gain something and go to where the fear is. I know it sounds straight forward. However it really isn’t the case. Especially when we are hiding from our own fear. Have you ever hidden from you own fear? To be honest the best label that I have for that is anxiety. The truth is it is super difficult to step into your own power especially when everyone is telling you not to. You might find it super confusing to discover that many people don’t want that for you, especially when you are living a life with deep authenticity. You see it highlights all the things that other people are not and they don’t like that. It’s actually quite a mission to turn off the exterior chatter that dictates your process in your head. More than this detach from it completely. There are so many people who are willing to hold you back from your dreams, question your curiosity and even undermine your moral commitment.

In a world where many of us are engaged with the world through the filter of screens controlled by an algorithm, now more than ever it entirely possible to control what you witness. Scary on one side of things and an incredible opportunity on the other. Of course, I am not a sunshine and roses kind of girl. I am ultimately someone deeply aware of the thorns. Although we do have to face our fears we don’t have to stay witness to human tragedy and especially not our own.

It’s a problem. It’s a problem that our feelings aren’t considered valid. The real challenge that I present in this article is how do we present emotions as both necessary and valid? How do we get on the emotional journey? More than this how do we get anybody to share the emotional ride. I suppose at this point we might want to ask is what is the first emotion that we felt can we remeber? Do we know how we felt as a child? Do we know how we feel. For many of us this is the revelation that takes us onto the emotional journey as an adult. It’s recognising the way we feel now is often related to how we felt in the past. That often our emotional journeys as adults is the recovery of the emotional journey of our pasts. That understanding the emotional journey of the past is absolutely key to unlocking the emotional journey that we desire in the future. Often the emotional journey doesn’s always start well. It’s sometimes all about all the feelings that we don’t want, that we are emmersed in, that we can’t seem to get out of. It’s the point at which that we can no longer stand the ‘negative’ emotions that we feel that creates a trajectory of radical change.

Of course it isn’t easy stepping out on to the open road with all you vulnerabilty on view after all isn’t that what unifoms were for? If we all dress the same, act the same, speak the same, think the same , then how could anythign possibly go wrong? You are not the control sample of the universe. We are not the play thing of corporations and institutions. We have feelings, we have emotions and we are entited to have our thoughts, feeling and emotions respected. It’s a no brainer. Literally stop thinking about it and start doing the work.

More than this the emotional journey is not linear. Somehow in this wack world we are all told that we have to continually prove ourselves. To be honest I wonder sometimes what it would be like to coast for a while. Yet somehow that doesn’t seem to be allowed. We have to keep pushing for ever greater success and ever greater emotional upgrade. What if you just put either one of those two things down for a second. In recent years it’s become ever more clear that the work never ends. That our evolving emotional landscape is the journey. That we as individuals are there for all our emotional ups and down and unexpectd sideswerves. I feel like I am, of course, pointing out the obvious. Yet truly in a world where the term ‘Mental Health Crisis’ is banded about like a ping pong ball we have to start connecting the dots. As a species we are not well. As a species our mental and emotional health are impacting our lives, familes and communities. Our mental health is impacting the planet. What are the deep seated emotions that are stopping you from doing the right thing? What is stopping you from addressing this ‘Mental Health Crisis’? Where and how is poor mental health affecting you? Is this the intersection at which to start the conscious emotional journey.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude to accompany the Feral Systemic Healing Circle

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Water & Sleep

kimberleen

I’m sure I must have written about these two things before. Yet these days a rarely mention them in conversation. Not least because my water drinking practices have become precarious, as in I have fallen out of the habit.

I intitially started writing this article from the view point of hydration. I’ve writteen about the benefits of drinking water for years now even though my own water drinking habits have fallen by the wayside recently. I still think that drinking water is important and we are all entitled to have a slump in our self care. Especially when feeling means healing. Especially when we have to give ourselve time to process what is going on and not just push through… that’s really important too not maintaining a routine that is destroying you emotionally. For many of us that dopmine hit is just a little to tempting…

I didn’t start drinking water regularly until I was well into my twenties, up until then water was just tastelss stuff that came out of the tap. I’d been raised on coca-cola and cordial. My teeth are proabaly still paying the price forty years on. Clearly sugar addiction was a formative part of my youth which could tell you a lot about almost anybodies health journey over the latter half of the twentith century. Even now I’m engaged in a period of sugar dependency. I guess a global pandemic and a bit of personal trauma will do that.

Water on the greater persepective is 85% of who we are. It is what we are made of. It is the primary composite part of the planet that we live on. It’s fuels the majority of life. Our relationship with water defines who we are, as it is what we are made of. It is our life force energy. We can’t survive without it. So when I write about water now it moves beyond how we consume water. It’s about how we relate to it. How we honour it. The moon moves the ocean as it moves us and yet these days this relationship is often treated and mythical rather than factual. We have become seperate from ourselves.

Sleep is caught up in survival, rest and trhiving. If you can’t sleep there is not way you can survive. My brain at least really can’t deal with the pressure. Sometime I wish it was different and then I think about the delerium, mania and dread that covers my days if I don’t get enoguh sleep. Being rested is far more important than being fed in my dreams of wellness. Where would I be with our sleep . Where have I been without sleep half mad, unregulated, strained and cracking.

General conversations about sleep these days too seems to be informeed by its scientific function rather than it’s ritual purpose. To rest, to sleep to dream. These day you are far more likely to read an article on the benefits of good sleep for productivity rather than for soul growth. Even in the bible dreams are highly referenced as both insightful and prophetic. That sleep is a powerful place in which to connect to our truth. To swim in our subconscious and find the answers to all that plagues us.

Sleep for me will always be one of the most direct routes to healing. I love to sleep, it feeds me in ways that I have only very recently come to fully undersand. Since I graduated as a Sangoma sleep has taught me the most about my spirtual journey and how the expectations of society have drawn me away from my calling as a dreamwalker. The we can move beyond and outwith this world through our dreams and find answers to our deepest questionings.

The article was written to accompany the trauma wise circle by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.